Survivor 46 had more than its share of interpersonal drama. Between wild, over the top characters and a steady stream of blindsides, it felt like we didn’t go an entire episode without someone’s feelings getting hurt or in some cases, a full blown meltdown. Much of the recent attention on that drama has focused on the deterioration of Charlie and Maria’s relationship, but by far the most persistent and loudest conflict of the season was between Q Burdette and Liz Wilcox.
It’s now been many months since everyone involved left the island, but let the record show there’s still shade being thrown at each other. If you’re particularly interested, you’ll be able to find plenty of it on the Twitter accounts of the players who commented throughout the season, but I want to focus on one post by Q that’s an inside baseball Survivor insult of the highest order. You know those publicity photos Survivor has for every season that feature the six most notable players in a collage? Well, fans typically make their own versions before the official one comes out, and Q decided to post his favorite, which of course, did not include a particular someone. You can check it out below…
Was Liz one of the six most notable players of the season? It’s debatable. Any montage would obviously have to include Kenzie, Charlie, Maria and Q, which leaves two remaining spots to fill with some combination of Liz, Tiff, Venus, Ben, Tevin and Hunter, unless you wanted to get really weird and put in someone like Bhanu. So, I’m not offended by Q reposting a collage that excludes Liz. What I think is wild is the paragraph he wrote alongside it which says anyone who disagrees with the cover would be making a BIG MISTAKE.
Liz and Q never seemed to be best friends on the island, but their relationship really deteriorated after Q asked people to vote him out during tribal council. The request shocked everyone, including Liz who felt she did a lot of work to maneuver the votes in a particular direction and likely wouldn’t get credit for it because all the attention was focused on Q. It was the dumbest, most New Era reason ever for getting mad, but that conflict continued to simmer and fully exploded after Q refused to take Liz on the new infamous Applebee’s reward. She responded with an all-time classic Survivor meltdown that’ll no doubt be played in montages for as long as the show keeps making montages.
Their relationship was, for the most part, openly hostile after that, and it’s been clear on social media that there’s still plenty of lingering resentment to this day. With Survivor 50 coming up and old players being invited back, however, there’s certainly a possibility we could see these two go at it again.